How to Make Good Decisions

Do you ever feel like you struggle to make decisions? Well, I know I do, and I've learned a few things today that I want to share with you. Hi, my name is Chrystal Hurst, and I'm so glad you're joining me for this podcast. This is the solo episode, video and audio, of the Sister Circle Podcast. The Sister Circle Podcast actually releases 2 episodes a week, one with just me, yours truly, and another one where I interview a sister or a brother so that we can all grow together. Don't you know that we're better together? So I'm glad you're here. Listen, I want to jump into talking about this whole thing about making decisions. Do you know that many of us are decision fatigued? I go to the grocery store and I look at the soup aisle, the canned soup aisle, and immediately I'm totally overwhelmed. There is low sodium, there is low fat, there are 5 different variations of the chicken and noodle. Do you want chicken and noodle with letters, without letters? Do you want it to have veggies in there too? I don't know. What I do know is there's a million soups Uh, in a can that I have to choose from. And really, this goes on forever and ever and ever. It doesn't matter what you're doing— choosing your college, choosing your house, choosing a computer— more options mean more choices. And often, I don't know that we're aware of the fatigue and decision-making that we experience. So when you say that it's hard to make decisions, I get it. But I also want you to know you're not crazy. We live in a day and age where there's so many opportunities to make so many decisions about so many different things that making decisions, we're tired of it, which makes it a little more difficult than it's been before, I think. But I wanted to give you a few tips, a little information, a little guidance, maybe a little counseling with what I have been learning and practicing that's helping me. I don't like making mistakes. And so when I make decisions, I like to measure 8 times and cut once. Let me tell you, it drives my family crazy. It drives my team crazy. It drives my sister crazy, but I don't want to make mistakes. And so Not only am I decision fatigued, but I also don't want to have to do something over. So when I'm trying to make a decision, I get very, very overwhelmed because I want to get it right. So because I'm driving everybody crazy, I've had to think about what can I do to lower my decision fatigue and also to make decisions faster. Because sometimes when you take too long to make a decision, it costs. Literally this morning I was online making flight arrangements to go somewhere. And I looked at the flights a few weeks ago, but I didn't make the flight because I wasn't sure, and I wanted to think about it and hem and haw about it and talk to my husband about it and look at my calendar about it, just to make sure I wasn't going to book the flight for the wrong time. Well, you know what's happened in the last few weeks? Not only has time passed, which means that the price of the flight has gone up, but also oil prices are going up. And the airlines, just like everybody else, have to compensate for that. So I looked at that flight price this morning and would probably have not decided to go if I didn't already pay for the thing I was going to and had already booked my hotel. I had to book the flight and now the flight was more costly. I need you like me to make good decisions. Yes, but to make decisions in a timely fashion without putting too much stress or duress into making it. And I wanna give you some tips for how to do a good job with that. Number one, talk it out. Sometimes it really does help to get things out of your head. You can talk it out to your friend, you can talk it out with your husband, you can talk it out with your mom, your sister. And don't be ashamed if even the simplest of decisions you need to bring to a therapist or a counselor, because sometimes you really just need to hear yourself talk. I'm amazed. I have a friend who's a counselor, and I said, really, how much talking do you do? She said, I'll do some, but mostly what people need often is to hear themselves process. And I ask them questions questions so that they can continue processing themselves to a solution. And I know that that's not all counseling, but her point is that often what counseling gives, what talking to your friend gives, what going to therapy gives, what talking your husband's ear off does, is it allows you to hear yourself and to reason through your processing outside of your head. In your head, something happens. It can be very overwhelming to have thoughts dancing around in your head. And so when you talk it out with a friend or a therapist, or even in prayer— y'all, talk it out with Jesus— it helps you to things more clearly. Listen, I love, uh, the Bible verse that says, if anyone lacks wisdom, let them ask God. Like, literally, sometimes you pray about it and it just gets clear. Or Proverbs 15:22 that talks about, in the multitude of counselors there is wisdom, there is success. So you don't have to feel like you are, um, at odds with yourself by needing to share your decision-making with someone else. It's okay. It's actually good for you to let other people help you make decisions. And I, you know, when I talk about prayer, I think we think about prayer like, I gotta pray about this job, or I've got to pray about this, uh, this house, or I've got to pray about this man. Is this the man I'm supposed to be with, or the way I'm supposed to marry, man I'm supposed to marry? Okay, yeah, we can pray about those big things, but I'm like, you know, should I go today or tomorrow? Hmm, Lord, what do you think? God, what do you think? Sometimes we don't have because we don't ask. And maybe the God who sits higher and knows spiritual things that you don't know about would speak into your situation or even your can of soup if you would ask. Now, I also believe that there are some things God does not care about. Now, he wants us to ask him, but, but he also delights in us making decisions, because when we were created, we were created in God's image. We were created to rule. The Bible says, let them rule. It's the dominion principle. So you as a woman were designed to rule, which means making decisions. So feel empowered by God to do that. I also don't want you to think that anything is too small for you to bring to God. So talk it out, get it out of your head to yourself, to a friend, or to your therapist. The second thing is sit it out. Many decisions can be made and made well if you just don't rush to make them. Now, I'm not talking about dragging your feet and procrastinating and going end on end on end with, uh, just processing. That just isn't necessary. What I'm saying is just take a break from thinking so hard about it. What does this look like? This can look like being silent being quiet, to stop talking about it and just to pay attention to what you feel on the inside. It could look like stillness, to stop moving, to stop Googling, to stop researching and just sit with it for a second. This can look like— and often, y'all, this is the best thing— it looks like sleep. Just sleep on it and wake up in the morning with some fresh, some fresh ideas. You have no idea how much your brain actually wants to work on your behalf, as does your body and your soul. But if it's tired or if it's overwhelmed, overwhelmed. It cannot. And what happens when you go to sleep is you allow your brain to get rested, your soul to calm down, and often the answer will come to you crystal clear in the morning or after a good power nap. Even a power nap works. The last thing, sitting it out. For me, often it looks like walking, not with anything in my ears, not on the phone, not listening to my Spotify playlist, but just walking. Because also, the blood moving in your body, guess what else it feeds? It feeds your brain, which is where you're making these decisions. In your frontal lobe. Now, there's another kind of decision-making that I want to talk to you about, and I'll talk to you about that a little bit later. But right now I'm talking about this part right here where you're processing. Give your body, give your brain, give your mind and your heart space to come up with the answer. So talk it out, get it out of your head, sit it out, let your brain and body do the work, and then map it out. And this is really when you're getting into Not so much the canned soup, but yes, this house or that house, this man or no man, this vacation or that vacation. And it really involves so many layers of detail that you wanna make sure you're looking at all the things to include those details in your decisions. So write out your plans, like literally make the list or put it on a timeline or put it in a table. You need to be able to see things on paper often. It's not just to talk it out. There's so many moving pieces. You need to see it all for it to make sense. This also looks like a pros and cons sheet. Why should I do it? Why should I not do it? Right? And sometimes that works because the cons list will be really long and outweighs the pros or vice versa. Pros and cons though, each line item has its own weight. So keep that in mind. Just because you have 6 things in the pro list and 10 things in the con list, if number 1 on the pro list weighs more than all the cons, you do it anyway. But pros and cons are another way to map it out. Now here's the last thing. Pay attention to how you feel. That's journaling. Journaling is a way, yes, for you to express, but also for you to see. One of the things that most people don't do very well is after they journal, go back and look at it. And looking at your feelings and thoughts on paper is a part of you mapping it out, because then you can see, how did I really feel about this after the emotional swell has worn off? What was really in my mind and my heart? Allow your soul to influence your decision-making too. So talk it out, sit it out, and map it out. But I want to enclose all three of these things, um, with these tips of wisdom. Okay, when you do all these things, you may still make a decision and it may not be a good one. Here's my word of encouragement to you: failure isn't final. It does not finally mean that you're a bad decision maker. It does not finally mean that the decision you made is the only one that you can make. Sometimes you can switch gears midstream. So I want you to do all of these things and then say, If this was the wrong decision, the failure in this decision is not a final determinant of whether or not I can make decisions. And why is that? Because the more decisions you make, the better at decision-making you will get. You will learn about yourself. You will learn about the world. You will learn about how other people react. You will learn about the cost. And sometimes making decisions is actually the best training for making decisions. If you take too long to make decisions, or if you never can make a decision, guess what you're also not doing? You're not learning to make decisions. So I want to encourage you to practice making decisions because when you don't make the right one, it's not a failure. It's not final. You learn. And the last thing I told you that you make decisions in the front of your head. Well, right back here, right here. This is called your lizard brain. It's the part of your brain that wants to keep you alive. Like if you're hungry, that's your lizard brain. If you are trying to survive, that's your lizard brain. It is the part of you that says, at a really gut level, like a deep level. What do you really need? What do you really want? This is your gut, basically. We always talk about our gut being here, but that feeling, that fight or flight syndrome, the hair rising on your arms, I should do it or not do it, that is actually a function of your brain. But trusting your gut says sometimes, y'all, talking it out, sitting it out, and mapping it out is no match for your gut, and it certainly isn't a match for the Spirit of God in you. So do all the things, be a good decision maker, learn how to get better at decision making, but then know that God gave you, uh, a hyper, hyper spirituality, right? You are able to know spiritual things more so if you are a woman, and even more so if you are a lover of God. So don't forget to listen to your gut, to listen to the Spirit, to listen to your soul. And you shouldn't diminish that even as you seek to make good decisions, mapping things out in your life. Proverbs 9:10 says, The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And I want to take all that I said about talking it out, sitting it out, and mapping it out, and the tips for encouragement I just gave you— that your failure is not final, that the more decisions you make, the better you get at decision-making, and trust your gut— and I want to encompass it in this. I want to encircle it in this. I want to surround it in this: the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. You want to know how to save yourself from even having to make certain decisions? Certain decisions, y'all, have already been made for you. Read your Bible, girl. Read your Bible so that you're not reinventing the wheel. There is stuff that has already been written so that you would not have to figure it out the hard way. And that ultimately, for me, is where making good decisions start. I hope this video has been helpful to you. If you're listening to the audio version of this video, I hope you've enjoyed what you've heard as you clean the kitchen, mop the floor, gone for your walk, driven your kids to school in the car. That's why we're producing the audio version so you can do it on the go. And in either case, my hope is you've been encouraged. Maybe a light has flicked on in your brain. And my hope is that you will come back next week to see me and share this episode, video or audio, with friends who need to hear this message too. All right, y'all, I'll see you next time. Have a great week.